Out of Control:Transform government by giving up control

W. David StephensonStephenson Strategies Sept. 9, 2008

For years, managers’ job has been, well, you know, managing people and information. OK, let’s be blunt: it’s been to control people and information.

That was logical: after all, the only management models we had in the early days of large organizations were the army and the Roman Catholic church, and they were both big on control of both people and information.

Today, like it or not, the potential for top-down control is gone.

The reason is Web 2.0 applications, which let everyone participate in creating content. You’ve heard about the destabilizing effect that wikis, such as the intelligence community’s Intellipedia, and blogs, such

as the TSA blog, can have on business as usual.

Out of control!

However, today I want to talk about two other Web 2.0 applications, automated data feeds and data visualization tools, which I believe will ultimately have even more impact on management, because changing who has access to, and can work with, information is the most important change of all.

Like it or not, these applications mean that workers and information are out of control. .... And that’s good.

•Efficiency•Lower cost•Find overlaps & synergies•Break down barriers

Why is it good? The reason, (and I can think of no one worldwide who understands this shift than the gentleman sitting next to me, Vivek

Kundra), is an astonishing range of potential benefits that stem from allowing employees -- and even the public -- to have ready access to a wide range of real-time data and the tools to interpret it

They include some that are particularly critical in harsh economic times such as these, when it’s hard to justify any deviation from past practices:

• Increased efficiency• Reduced cost of delivering services.• Identifying overlap of programs and personnel• Identifying potential synergies between programs, especially ones delivered on a location-based system• Breaking down barriers between programs and agencies.

Emergent behavior

And there’s another potential benefit.When you allow free access to information and free your workers, customers -- and even the general public to explore that

information in new ways -- a curious thing happens.You set create conditions that can lead to new breakthroughs that would never be possible, even with the most talented,

versatile workforce, when they were under strict control. The reason is what’s called emergent behavior: the scientific phenomenon in which simple organisms such as ants or bees,

when acting collectively, can produce results that couldn’t be predicted from the properties of the individual members. In other words, the whole -- at least potentially -- is greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s the same phenomenon that’s now being documented in human society: what James Surowiecki calls “the wisdom of crowds.”

As he wrote, “… put together big enough and diverse enough groups of people & ask them to make decisions affecting matters of general interest, [and] that group's decisions will, over time, be intellectually superior to the isolated individual, no matter how smart or well-informed he is."

Much of my work is in the emergency communication and management field. Each new disaster requires ad hoc strategy and the ability to change direction on a dime as the changing situation dictates. Not surprisingly, academic researchers have found it is a hot bed of emergent behavior.

I can think of no better example of the combination of data feeds and visualization tools as a stimulus for emergent behavior than the Hurricane Information Center site that Andy Carvin launched less than two weeks ago. Because so many people who were already active in various online social networks were able to contribute, and because they were able to instantly populate the site with real-time information from a variety of government and other data sources because of data feeds, the site quickly became the go-to source of information on Hurricane Gustav, then rapidly morphed into also covering Hanna, Ike .... and Zebediah.. That, my friends, is emergent behavior. If it can save lives, think what it could do to help you manage filling potholes more effectively!

Nice job, Andy!

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1st: release the dataText

There are two components to this switch from tight control of information to free access and use. The first is providing ready access to information, in the form of automated data flows, in formats such as XML and KML,

and distributed through syndication tools such as Atom and RSS.

For many years, it has seemed for most of us that the flow of data was one way: into some sort of dark hole within the organization -- I liken it to the final scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when the Ark of the Covenant was locked in a government warehouse, and you know it wasn’t going to be seen again.

Our personal demographics, our health (or lack thereof) our social (or anti-social) behavior, our buying habits, our work are the raw material for data on everything from crime to employment.

However, even though those statistics in turn had a very definite influence on our lives, determining everything from productivity raises to which communities get federal grants, most of us, even a lot of managers, had little or no access to the data. When we did gain access, they were usually just presented to us as a fait accompli, rather than as a subject for discussion and questions.

Rather than struggling … to design sites that meet each end-user’s need ... the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data”

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Some motivated, technologically- sophisticated individuals can create informative data visualizations the hard way, by “scrapping” data from governmental web sites, as Adrian Holovaty did with Chicago Crime.

However, now that it is so simple to create data feeds such as RSS and Atom that are generated automatically as new data are added, there’s little rationale not to do so.

In fact, Princeton researchers recently released a paper making a startling assertion: the best way for the government to assure that web sites really serve the public is to concentrate on publishing data streams rather than on customized portal design -- because others can use the data in a variety of ways:

“Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user’s need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data”

Now I’d argue that the Princeton team, coming from a Libertarian perspective, is too dismissive of government’s own ability to use data effectively, but the point about the importance of the data streams is well taken.

Several federal and state agencies now publish a variety of data feeds.

The most exciting model in the US is the District of Columbia’s Citywide Data Warehouse. It provides real-time numerical and geospatial feeds, drawn from more than 200 data sets, ranging from crime reports to to building permits to those pothole complaints, published by both Atom and RSS feeds, and providing data in formats including XML, TXT and KML.

Now the UK is upping the ante -- and I mean that literally. The government’s Power of Information Task Force has created a project with the refreshingly self-effacing title “Show Us a Better Way,” which asks the public: “Ever been frustrated that you can't find out something that ought to be easy to find?

Ever been baffled by league tables or 'performance indicators'? Do you think that better use of public information could improve health, education, justice or society at large?” Did you ever imagine government would ask you those questions? Wow! And they aren’t just asking questions: the government created a £40,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas on how to use government data to the next level.

Let’s hope that this initiative results not only in substantive benefits to UK citizens, but that it also spawns a wealth of imitators, in the US, each leading to new insights and reforms. I should mention, in that regard, that Obama, in his technology white paper, lists issuing data streams as the first step in his governmental transparency initiative.

2nd: visualize data

The second major component of a public data project is to help people find simple-to-use ways to portray the data visually. Why is visual interpretation a must?

Generally acknowledged as the leading thinker on data graphics, Edward Tufte says that even the most skilled statisticians often find representing data visually is the most insightful way of making sense of them:"…. of all methods for analyzing and communicating statistical information, well-designed data graphics are usually the simplest and at the same time the most powerful.”

A growing range of new Web 2.0-based visualization tools are readily available. Several of the commercial sites now offer secure versions making it simple for agencies to also add internal visualization sites.

The creators of IBM’s Many Eyes say:“Our goal is to ‘democratize’ visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis …. All of us ... are

passionate about the potential of data visualization to spark insight. It is that magical moment we live for: an unwieldy,

unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern. “As visualization designers we have witnessed and experienced many of those wondrous sparks. But in recent years,

we have become acutely aware that the visualizations and the sparks they generate, take on new value in a social setting. Visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data .... When we share it and discuss it, we understand it in new ways.”

This particular visualization was the first one that I personally created, to help understand patterns in DHS's disbursement of funds for one of its programs. The simple-to-understand directions allowed me to upload the data and create the visualization in a matter of minutes.

This example is a Google mashup Jon Udell whipped up quickly to highlight pothole complaints to the DC Department of

Public Works, and track -- on a real-time basis (because the city releases that data automatically) -- the repairs’ status. Sure, you might find that information in a chart, but who’d sift through pages of records in hopes of possibly finding the

one or two that applied to their neighborhood? By contrast, if you saw this map, and lived near one of the pointers, wouldn’t curiosity compel you to click on it? Wouldn’t the fact that it includes not only information about where the pothole is and when the complaint was made, but also the repair status TODAY, both fascinate you -- and provoke you to call the DPW if it’s now 3

months later and the map shows the repair still hasn’t been made? Thus, a simple map can be the impetus for citizen awareness – and greater agency accountability. Incidentally, this example also illustrates an important aspect of data visualizations: while many are done by

organizations, many are done by individuals with a passion for a specific issue, such as..

Some visualizations combine various data bases to illustrate convergence, contrasts or possible causality.

This example is from Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles, a collaboration between UCLA and community activists. Their

motto: “neighborhood improvement and recovery is not just for the experts.” This map is an great example of data visualization’s impact, because it combines and maps data on 7 “problem indicators” (including code violations, property tax delinquencies, and fire records, etc.) that previously remained isolated in various data bases in various agencies within city government. However, when the data are brought together and so many of them are clustered on a map of a single block, that’s a red flag to city officials to intervene NOW with coordinated services to

halt the decline.

Equally important, web-based data visualization sites often include community-building Web 2.0 tools such as topic hubs, tags, and discussion areas. Those sharing and discussion tools make it easy to focus many individuals’ and groups’ attention on a policy issue, increasing the chance that new insights will emerge precisely because of the interplay of so many perspectives.

Who says we can’t?

Yes, the benefits of using a combination of data feeds and visualization tools are impressive, but what if you’re a manager? How will you cope with this loss of control of your people and information? How can you maximize the benefits?

You can’t do it by denying reality. As we’ve already seen with wikis and blogs within organizations and agencies, if you don’t provide the tools internally, it’s easy enough for employees to just use commonly-available ones on the web, and that’s especially true with the new “Millennials” who will be joining your workforce.

If they’re going to do it anyway, why should you deny your organization the benefits of these new tools?Remember: they, and your data, are out of control...

That’s why the new intranet that Vivek Kundra and his D.C. team rolled out in July is so important. Its new dashboard gives employees access to the more than 200 data feeds the city publishes, as well as the visualization

tools to manage everything from long-range planning to finding the most efficient ways to handle their tasks for the day. Equally important, it’s critical that managers closely monitor the discussions that evolve on these sites, act on good ideas,

and make certain to both praise the ideas and change their compensation systems to reward employees for participation.

The payoff: transformation!

This transition to out-of-control management (how’s that for a contradiction in terms?) won’t be easy: the tools are so new, and constantly evolving, and the legacy of command-and-control management is so strong, that there will be many false starts and failures along the way.

Yet, I believe loss of control is inevitable in the world of Web 2.0, and that the sooner we begin experimenting with it, the better off we’ll all be.

The reward will be governmental transformation of a kind that’s particularly valuable in hard economic times: empowered, creative workers; reduction of waste and overlap; coordination between programs and agencies; and, most important, new insights -- the wisdom of crowds -- that would have been impossible in the old era of command-and-control.

Thank you, and let chaos reign!

To learn more about public data & data visualizations, contact:

W David StephensonStephenson Strategies

335 Main Street, Medfield, MA 02052508 740-8918

D.Stephenson@stephensonstrategies.com

To learn more about transparent government and how to create the processes and policies to make it a reality, contact:

Stephenson Strategies 335 Main Street, Medfield, MA 02052 (508) 740-8918D.Stephenson@stephensonstrategies.com